BLESS YOUR HEART
​​(A BLESS YOUR HEART NOVEL #1) 

St. Martin's Press / Minotaur Books | April 2024 (US)

Rebellion / Solaris | July 2024 (UK)

Rise and shine. The Evans women have some undead to kill.

For generations, the Evans women have taken care of laying the residents of their Southeast Texas town to rest at Evans Funeral Parlor. Occasionally, one of the quiet rural community’s dead become restless, and it’s the Evanses’ job to put them back in their grave. But this summer has been especially hot, and the dead have begun to rise, ripping the peace—and the throats—out of the town. As four generations of Evans women fight to keep the dead in their graves, long-buried family secrets are forced into the light, and they must confront the truth that the biggest monster may in fact be one of their own.
 
A dead woman’s tongue, a missing dog, and a strange newcomer are law enforcement’s only clues to sort out the hell recently unleashed on their small town—even when all tracks lead back to the Evans women.

A story about monstrous secrets and the power of motherly love, BLESS YOUR HEART is a multi-generational story told from multiple POVS of a diverse cast of characters who fight to save their town from the Strigoi—the original vampire.

An ESQUIRE Best Horror Novel of 2024
​Read Jump Scares 2024 New Horror
UK Book Announcement

"Ryan's compelling horror/mystery hybrid is bursting with serious scares, humor, and Southern charm."
​–Library Journal (full review by ALA Horror Librarian Becky Spratford)

"Simply a delight, Bless Your Heart is that perfect blend of horror, gore and a good time. The women vs the undead plot and the Southern setting make for an unmissable dynamic duo. It may be a debut, but you'll be eagerly awaiting whatever Lindy Ryan comes up with next." –Barnes & Noble Bookseller Review

ANOTHER FINE MESS 
​(A BLESS YOUR HEART NOVEL #2) 

 St. Martin's Press / Minotaur Books | April 2025

MAKING SURE DEAD THINGS STAY BURIED IS THE FAMIY BUSINESS.

From Lindy Ryan, "one of the “most electrifying voices in the horror genre” (Gwendolyn Kiste), Another Fine Mess brings the Evans women back for an unforgettable showdown in this crackling, rollicking mystery of humor, heart, and horror.

For over a hundred years, the Evans women have kept the undead in their strange southeast Texas town from rising. But sometimes the dead rise too quick–and that’s what left Lenore Evans, and her granddaughter Luna, burying Luna’s mother, Grace, and Lenore’s mother, Ducey. Now the only two women left in the Evans family, Luna and Lenore are left rudderless in the wake of the most Godawful Mess to date.

But when the full moon finds another victim, it’s clear their trouble is far from over. Now Lenore, Luna, and the new sheriff—their biggest ally—must dig deep down into family lore to uncover what threatens everything they love most. The body count ticks up, the most unexpected dead will rise–and force Lenore and Luna to face the possibility that the undead aren’t the only monsters preying on their small town.

COLD SNAP

 Titan Books | October 2024

Bookseller Announcement

“Ryan weaponizes the dread of grief suffered in isolation. Horrific and heartbreaking.”
​–Jamie Flanagan
Screenwriter The Haunting of Bly Manor

Consumed with grief after the death of her husband weeks before Christmas, a mother takes her son to a remote mountain cabin for the holidays, where a sinister presence stalks deep within the Pennsylvania Wilds.
 
Two weeks ago, Christine Sinclaire’s husband, Derek, slipped off the roof while hanging Christmas lights and fell to his death on the front lawn. Desperate to escape her guilt and her grief, Christine packs up her fifteen-year-old son and the family cat and flees to the cabin they’d reserved deep in the remote Pennsylvania Wilds to wait out the holidays.
 
It isn’t long before Christine begins to hear strange noises coming from the forest. When she spots a horned figure watching from between frozen branches, Christine assumes it’s just a forest animal—a moose, maybe, since the property manager Armentia warned her about them, said they’d stomp a body so deep into the snow nobody’d find it ’til spring--
 
But moose don’t walk upright like the shadowy figure does. They don’t call with Christine’s dead husband’s voice.
 
A terrifying, wintery tale of isolation in the festive season, COLD SNAP is a profound and powerful exploration of the exploded moments we survive in our grief and trauma.

DOLLFACE

St. Martin's Press / Minotaur Books | TBD 2026 

After witnessing her mother’s bizarre death, a horror author falls in with a catty group of suburban moms where she becomes the Final Girl in her very own slasher.

After witnessing her mother’s cosmetics-induced suicide, uninspired horror author Jill Marshall has no interest in the beauty products her influencer sister Kitty peddles. She’s also not the kind of girl who’d involve herself in the elementary school PTA. But when her family transfers across the country and her sweet new neighbor Darla Lashett delivers a welcome basket full of makeup samples from a brand Jill’s never heard of—DOLLFACE—she finds herself helping Darla end her last year as PTA President “with a bang” at the upcoming Halloween Boogie Bash.

Then the attacks begin.
​
The body count stacks up in a wild series of mutilations lacking any consistent MO. The fact that they’re all members of the Brunswick PTA is the only connection—that and all survivors saw someone in a vintage doll mask: pert nose, blonde hair to the jawline, beauty mark. But as Jill struggles with her new novel, she alone sees a pattern in which all signs point to Darla—and tonight is Boogie Bash.

The Stepford Wives meets Scream in this violent descent into the cult-like nature of toxic beauty standards and feminine domesticity. Ryan explores the complicated relationships between mothers and sisters with dark humor and sly nods to classic horror tropes and media. Readers will enjoy this blend of campy cult humor, psychological horror, and familiar slashers set in the modern era of viral beauty culture.

ABOUT LINDY RYAN

LINDY RYAN is a Bram Stoker Awards® Nominee and Silver Falchion Award-winning editor, author, short-film director, and professor. Ryan is the current author-in-residence at Rue Morgue, the world’s leading horror culture and entertainment brand, and the "Chill Quill" columnist at BookTrib. Her guest articles and features include NPR, BBC Culture, Irish Times, Daily Mail, and more. She is an active member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA), the International Thriller Writers (ITW), and the Brothers Grimm Society of North America. In 2022, she was named one of horror's most masterful anthology curators, alongside Ellen Datlow and Christopher Golden, and has been declared a "champion for women's voices in horror" by Shelf Awareness (2023). Her animated short film, TRICK OR TREAT, ALISTAIR GRAY, based on her children's book of the same name, won the Grand Prix Award at the 2022 ANMTN Awards. 
​
Ryan is currently a full-time professor at Rutgers University in the Masters of Professional Science program, She is also a guest faculty mentor in Western Connecticut State’s MFA program. Prior to her career in academia, Ryan was the co-founder of Radiant Advisors, a business intelligence research and advisory firm, where she led the company’s research and data enablement practice for clients that included 21st Century Fox Films, Warner Bros., and Disney. In 2017, Ryan founded Black Spot Books, an independent press focused on amplifying underrepresented voices in horror, where she maintains her role as President after the company was acquired in 2019 as an imprint of Vesuvian Media. Ryan served from 2020 to 2022 on the Board of Directors for the Independent Book Publishers Association and was a PW 2020 Star Watch Honoree. Currently, she is the co-chair of the Horror Writers Association Publishers Council. 

Ryan grew up cutting her teeth on Goosebumps and universal monsters. She has published numerous academic texts and also writes clean, seasonal romance under the name ​Lindy Miller, where her books have been adapted for screen.